SOURCE: A review of The American Evasion of Philosophy, in Journal of American History, Vol. 79, No. 2, September, 1992, p. 687.

In the following review, Brick offers a positive assessment of The American Evasion of Philosophy.

The title of this book [The American Evasion of Philosophy] is laudatory, not pejorative. Here evasion is emancipation: Turning away from “epistemology-centered philosophy” and its search for absolute standards of knowledge and ethics can release intellectual energy for cultural criticism, political action, and social change. That transformation of intellect, Cornel West says, is the burden and promise of American pragmatism broadly defined. In this subtle and complex account of pragmatism’s development and meaning. West demonstrates an enormous range of reading and reflection, a bold, almost acrobatic style of argument, and a nondogmatic sensitivity to the virtues in diverse currents of thought.

West’s “genealogy” charts three groups of intellectuals: those who in different ways...